Anthony Shapiro

Anthony started making pots at 13 years old and after apprenticing under Kim Sack’s studio in Johannesburg, got a pottery teacher position, where he built up a huge teaching studio at The Clay Pot.

His business exploded and he set up a production that became a serious brand, called ’ ANT’ bowls. They wound up at Conran Stores in London, Paris, Tokyo and NYC; Anthropologie; ABC Carpet and Home in NYC as well as many local stores such as Loads of Living, Woolworths, @home and boutique home-ware stores such as Bright House, Congo Joe, LIM and Haas.

In 2006 he went to live in a hut on a hill at a Buddhist retreat in KwaZulu Natal where he made pots in silence, eight hours a day, which were ‘’two years of pure bliss’’.
In 2012 he moved to Cape Town to set up a teaching studio at Art in the Forest, a glorious studio set in a Bauhaus building high on a hill in the woods of Constantia (on the back slopes of Table Mountain), which provides commercial support for outreach work by the Light From Africa Foundation.

Art in the Forest is a centre for ceramic excellence, with the most comprehensive teaching studio in the country, where students learn everything possible to do with clay – from pinching a pot, to the history of blue and white. This hands-on hub is a space where associate artists can rent space and work alongside resident artists, as well as a gallery housing the best South African contemporary ceramics – all under Anthony’s aegis as creative director, who says ‘’it truly is ceramic heaven’’.

Anthony’s wish is to spot talent in people passing through the doors and mentor someone to become independent and earn a living. ‘’Even if one talented person a year is mentored it can make a difference’’.

Light From Africa Foundation creates a safe space for orphaned and vulnerable children to express themselves creatively through the magical medium of clay.